An Extract
"Sometimes, when I play back that day, I think I had a premonition. That the moment I picked up the phone I had this sense something was wrong. But more likely, it being a Wednesday evening, I’d have been rushing round trying to get washed up and cleared away before going to the gym, and not thinking about anything other than where I’d put my water bottle and was it too late to walk in which case I needed to shift the wheeliebin and get the car out of the garage.I do remember I couldn’t tell who was speaking at first, because Jaz was in such a state. Then I managed to make out “Mum”, and that’s when I started to get frightened. I said, ‘Jaz, love, what’s the matter?’ She just cried harder. I said, ‘Jaz, are you all right?’ which was a daft question because of course she wasn’t all right, she was absolutely beside herself, incoherent. And she’s normally so cool, so laid-back; that or in a temper about something. Not tears, though, she’s never been one for tears.
So I said, ‘What’s happened? Whatever’s the matter?’
She said, ‘He told me, Mum, he told me straight out.’ Which I couldn’t make sense of. All I knew was that something was dreadfully wrong.
It’s amazing how you can go from calm to terrified in a few seconds, like revving up a car. I made myself ask, ‘Is it Matty?’ That was the very worst scenario I could imagine; the call every grandparent dreads. I remember looking down at my hand where it was holding the edge of the chair, and the knuckles were white, and at the back of my mind I was making all these mad bargains with heaven and fate, anything.
‘It’s not Matty,’ I heard her say.
My legs nearly gave out with relief. Thank you God, thank you God, I was saying in my head. At least if Matty was all right, if my Matty was safe and sound, I could cope with whatever was coming.
‘Tell me, love,’ I said.
‘Mum,’ she said, ‘Just, please come.’
They say families follow certain patterns. Like, if you’re knocked about as a kid, you might end up marrying someone who knocks you about, and if your mother’s a cold sort of woman, you’re going to find it hard to bond with your own children. I’d have said that was phooey: thinking of my own mum, and how she was with me, and how I’ve been with Jaz, there’s no comparison. But then, you don’t know what children take in when they’re young. You can do so much right, run yourself ragged for them, and they’ll still seize on the one thing you did wrong. Which in my case was marry a cheat. Which, it turned out, was what Jaz had done."
A Mother's Guide to Cheating - out on 18th Feb 2010.